Monday, April 29, 2002

Considering how long it's taken us to get halfway through Act I of Samson, we're not going to make it to Act III anytime soon. Here's Plácido Domingo as the blind Samson of Act III singing "Vois ma misère, hélas" ("See my misery, alas").

SAMSON REACHES HIS PEAK OF FERVOR, IN AMUSICAL EXHORTATION IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

In a moment we're going to be listening in proper sequence to the remaining scenes (counting them in the old-fashioned theatrical way, where the entrance of any new character marks the beginning of a new "scene") that make up the opening scene of Samson. But first I wanted to expand a bit on the taste I offered before the click-through of Samson's final exhortation to his fellow Hebrews, "Israël, romps ta chaîne" ("Israel, break your chains"). So we're going to listen now to his reply to Abimélech's rant, and then hear, first, how he comes to urge this particular urging, and then how it develops and expands.

SAMSON: It's you whom his mouth reviles,and yet the earth hasn't trembled?O Lord! The abyss is upon us.I see in the hands of angelsa weapon of shame shining,and the phalanxes of heavengather to avenge God.Yes, the angel of darkness,while passing before them,utters funereal criesthat make the heavens tremble!Finally the hour has come,the hour of God the Avenger,and I hear, in the clouds,his fury bursting.Yes, in the face of his wrathall are terrified and flee!One feels the earth trembling;in the heavens lightning flashes!CHORUS OF HEBREWS: Yes, in the face of his wrathall are terrified and flee!One feels the earth trembling;in the heavens lightning flashes!ABIMÉLECH: Stop! Mad, reckless man!Or fear exciting my wrath!SAMSON: Israel, break your chains!O people, rise up!Come and slake your hatred!The Lord is within me!O thou, God of Light,as in the days of yesteryear,hear my prayerand fight for thy laws!THE HEBREWS: Israel, break your chains, &c.SAMSON: Yes, in the face of his wrathall are terrified and flee!One feels the earth trembling;in the heavens lightning flashes!He unleashes the tempest;one sees at his passingthe ocean retreating!THE HEBREWS and SAMSON: Israel, break your chains, &c.[ABIMÉLECH hurls himself, sword in hand, to strike him. SAMSON snatches the sword from him and strikes him. ABIMÉLECH cries for help while falling. The Philistines who accompany the satrap want to help him; SAMSON, brandishing his sword, drives them off. The greatest confusion reigns among them. SAMSON and THE HEBREWS exit the stage.]

Scene 2[ABIMÉLECH enters, followed by several warriors and Philistine soldiers.]ABIMÉLECH: Who then raises his voice here?Again this vile herd of slaves,always daring to flout our lawsand wanting to break their shackles!Hide your sighs and your tears,which try our patience;instead invoke the clemencyof those who were your conquerors![2nd stanza omitted in the RCA excerpts:]This God whom your voice imploreshas remained deaf to your cries,and you still dare to pray to himwhen he delivers you into our contempt?If his power isn't vain,let him show his divinity!Let him come to break your chains!Let him restore your freedom!Do you think this God comparableto Dagon, the greatest of gods,guiding with his redoubtable armour victorious warriors?Your fearful divinityfled trembling before him,as the plaintive doveflees the vulture that pursues it!SAMSON: It's you whom his mouth reviles . . . .[Continues as above.]

Scene 3[The doors of the temple of Dagon open. The High Priest, followed by numerous servants and guards, descends the steps of the portico. He stops in front of the corpse of ABIMÉLECH; the Philistines step aside before him.]HIGH PRIEST: What do I see? Abimélech! Struck down by slaves!Why let them escape? Let's run, let's run, my worthies!To avenge your prince, crush under your blowsthis uprisen people daring your wrath!1ST PHILISTINE: I felt all my bloodfreeze in my veins.It seems like the chainesare suddenly going to entwine me.2ND PHILISTINE: I search in vain for my weapons!My arms are powerless!My heart is filled with anxieties!My knees are trembling!HIGH PRIEST: Cowards! More cowardly than women!You flee in the face of combat!Do you fear the flames of their Godwhich will shrivel in you arms?Scene 4[A Philistine messenger enters.]MESSENGER: My lord! The furious mobthat Samson leads and guidesin his audacious revoltdraws near, ravaging the harvest!THE TWO PHILISTINES and THE MESSENGER:Let's flee from needless danger!Let's leave this place as quickly as possible!My lord, let's abandon the cityand hide our shame from view!HIGH PRIEST: Accursed be forever the raceof the children of Israel!I want to erase all trace of them,to soak them in bile!Accursed be the one who guides them!I will crush underfoothis broken bones, his parched throat,without a shake of pity!Accursed be the breast of the womanwho made him see the day!Let finally an infamous womanbetray his love!Accursed be the God he adores --this God, his sole hope!And whose altar and powermy hatred once again insults.

And we're going to hear two performances we've been sampling the whole way: my much-loved 1962 EMI version with Rita Gorr, Jon Vickers, and Ernest Blanc, wonderfully conducted by Georges Prêtre; and the 1946 EMI version, on the strength of its solid (French!) Samson, José Luccioni plus the splendid High Priest of Paul Cabanel and the vocallly bottom-shy but otherwise first-rate Abimélech of Charles Cambon.

Unless I've screwed it up somewhere (always a possibility), I've organized both performances with track switches that actually work in our favor, breaking the scene down into the same four logical units.

UPDATE: I knew I would screw up big-time somewhere with these audio files, and both of these were wrong. Track 4 of the Fourestier recording now stops at the end of the opening scene, and the Prêtre recording now actually is the Prêtre recording, I think.

Saturday, April 27, 2002

[4/27/2012] Preview: Is this the most beautiful recording ever made? (continued)

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Pianists Leon Fleisher and Gil Kalish

NOW, ABOUT THAT MYSTERIOUS CONNECTION

As I mentioned, last week on consecutive nights I happened to attend the American Symphony Orchestra's tribute to composer George Crumb and then the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center "Evening with" pianists Leon Fleisher and Gilbert Kalish, and this week I've devoted two nights to the string quartets of Bartók. At some point, or points, I definitely want to write more about a host of issues prompted by those events. For now, let me explain the link -- in my mind, at least -- between last week's pair of events last week and also the link between them and the recording of "Beautiful Child of Song" we heard before the click-through.

First, Gil Kalish has throughout his distinguished career been closely associated with contemporary music, emphatically including that of George Crumb (born 1929, and conspicuously and apparently delightedly present Friday night). And as it happens, when I think of Crumb, my strongest association is a performance of his Ancient Voices of Children featuring one of the most charismatic performances I've ever heard, by the much-missed mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani. (She also recorded the piece for Nonesuch, with Arthur Weisberg and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. I've never gotten the same experience from the recording, though.)

Jan D and Gil K in fact performed and recorded music of Crumb together -- and, fortunately, a whole lot of other music as well. It was a great musical partnership, which I hope we'll be investigating further in the not-too-distant future. For now, though, I'm not sure I know of a more beautiful piece of music-making than their "Beautiful Child of Song," another of those recordings I've been known to sit and listen to over and over and over again.

As for Leon Fleisher, as I expect most Sunday Classics readers know, he suffered a hiatus of some 40 years in his two-handed piano-playing career when, having established himself at a remarkably young age as one of his time's preeminent pianists, he lost the use of his right hand. That didn't end his career, though. He took to what he could still do: play the surprisingly substantial left-hand piano repertory, conduct, and teach -- including a 13- year stint as artistic director of one of the country's most important music-education institutions, the summer Tanglewood Music Center -- alongside chairman of the faculty Gil Kalish, as we were reminded in the background note on the program by CMS directors Wu Han and David Finckel.

At last Friday's CMS "Evening with Fleisher & Kalish," in addition to playing the haunting Schubert F minor Four-Hand Piano Fantasy, D. 940, with Gil Kalish and a suite by Erich Korngold for left-hand piano, two violins, and cello (Op. 23), he played this beautiful little number, which had been included in the first two-handed recording he made after that 40-year hiatus, Egon Petri's solo-piano arrangement of Bach's "Sheep may safely graze."

BACH-PETRI: "Sheep may safely graze"(from Cantata No. 208)

Finally, this week I've reexperienced that formidable body of 20th-century chamber music, the six string quartets of Bartók, in chronological order, in a pair of concerts by the San Francisco-based Alexander Quartet, which is quartet in residence at New York's Baruch Performing Arts Center. And I thought we would listen to just one movement, the opening movement of the last quartet, of 1939, in this lovely 1992 performance by the New Budapest Quartet (violinists András Kiss and Ferenc Balogh, violist Laszlo Barsony, and cellist Károly Botvay -- and yes, we just heard Botvay, with two of his then-colleagues in the Bartók Quartet and pianist István Lantos, playing the first movement of the Brahms A major Piano Quartet).

BARTÓK: String Quartet No. 6:i. Mesto; Più mosso, pesante; Vivace

IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

The present projection is that we're going to finish up with the opening scene of Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. Things change, though, so I can't say for sure.

Monday, April 22, 2002

[4/12/2012] Is the radiant A major the "sleeper" among Brahms's piano quartets? (continued)

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You have to wonder whether pianist Mei Rui, violinist Kobi Malkin, violist Adeliya Chamrina, and cellist Michael Katz noticed that Brahms marked the slow movement of the A major Piano Quartet "Poco adagio" rather than "Adagio." I'm not complaining, though (it seems to me a lovely performance), just wondering.

BEFORE WE CONTINUE WITH THE BRAHMS A MAJOR PIANOQUARTET, I THOUGHT WE'D HARK BACK TO THE G MINOR

As you may guess from the consecutive opus numbers, 26 and 26, the first two Brahms piano quartets were essentially conceived in the same burst of inspiration -- another of those cases of a composer not just being able but seemingly needing to disgorge contrasting sets of musical arguments from his system. Which is why, before we proceed to the whole of the first movement of the A major quartet, I thought it would be useful to rehear the first movement of the G minor.

(I confess I also have an ulterior motive. I'm pretty grumbly about the recordings of the Brahms piano quartets, but I really like the set made by pianist Tamás Vásáry, violinist Thomas Brandis, violist Wolfram Christ, and cellist Ottomar Borwitzky, and it got aced out of the post on the G minor Quartet because, as I've mentioned, that weekend I thought I was going to be writing about the A major Quartet. For convenience I duly pulled the CD that contains it out of the DG "Complete Brahms" box safely ensconced at the office, so when I decided to do the G minor Quartet instead, I had the wrong quartet at home. Fast-forward to this week, when I realize that I never did get the CD with the A major Quartet back in the box. So now I have the performance of the G minor at hand, but not that of the A major! For the record, I've already refiled the disc containing the A major Quartet.)

Two of the performances of this movement we sampled Friday night seem to me too good not to follow up on. I suppose the one by Sviatoslav Richter and members of the Borodin Quartet is the more "conventional," though where Richter is concerned I have to put "conventional" in quotes. It's not easy to point out what he's doing that's so riveting, but that really does seem the appropriate word for it.

As for the performance by the Borodin Trio (with violist Rivka Golani), I noted when we listened to the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet that I love this team's breathtakingly broad, beautifully alive recording of the three Brahms quartets. This is especially remarkable in that I quite loathe the all-too-common practice of mindlessly bloating Brahms, bathing the music in unseemly musical sweat and often opening up musical seams all over the place -- seams carefully and deftly stitched by the composer.

We found all manner of intriguing musical and performance issues to touch on in G minor Piano Quartet. In the remaining movements of the A major, not so much. I didn't especially agonize over the choice of performances -- I think these are all fine (I think it's just a coincidence that they all feature established piano quartets) -- and the music seems to me on the whole to speak quite clearly for itself.

ii. Poco adagio

Maybe it would have been appropriate earlier when I isolated the three "principal themes" of the first movement that the "tunes" in this most lushly "tuneful" of creations parse more as "figures" or "patterns" than as what we would conventionally call "tunes." Certainly, though, the toughest test is a slow movement -- in this case not quite a full but a "poco" adagio.

Here, you'll note, we finally have a movement that isn't temporized in the tempo-marking process. The first movement, after all, is "not too much" allegro; the second, as noted, is merely "a little" adagio; and the third is similarly "a little" allegro. Brahms deemed no such qualification necessary for this rousing allegro finale. (It may be worth mentioning that this recording was made in the auditorium of the Troy [NY] Savings Bank, a venue that has achieved fairly legendary status. It does sound pretty nice, doesn't it?)

Saturday, April 20, 2002

[4/20/2012] Preview: Sunny and mellow -- it's Brahms in the key of A (continued)

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Do I have to explain why the opening of the Brahms Second Piano Quartet makes me think of the opening of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto? (It's hard to imagine that the same thought didn't occur to Brahms.) Here we have the movement played by the great pianist Leon Fleisher, who was all of 30 when he made this famous recording, on Jan. 10, 1959 (he turns 84 in July), part of a complete cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra which has remained in the catalog pretty steadily for more than 50 years.

We've actually already heard the above Fleisher-Szell recording of the first movement of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto -- in the March 2010 post "In the piano conceretos, we hear Beethoven in hard-fought sort-of-harmony with the universe," as part of an "all-star performance," with the second movement played by Wilhelm Kempff (from his stereo Beethoven concerto cycle with Ferdinand Leitner) and the finale played by Emil Gilels (who also recorded a Beethoven cycle with Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, but we heard an earlier recording with Leopold Ludwig). For sentimental reasons I couldn't resist popping it in here, though. As I'm writing this, I'm anticipating a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center concert tonight (which will have taken place by the time this post goes up) featuring Fleisher and a very different but also wonderful pianist, Gilbert Kalish (born 1935).

As you may have guessed, on Sunday we're going to be focusing on the Brahms A major Piano Quartet. (We came close to doing so back in September 2011, but wound up poking around the First Quartet, the G minor, instead.) Now we're going to hear a little more -- the full exposition -- in the same four performances, and I think you'll hear that the interpretive agenda set out in those opening five bars is carried through. (One textual note: The clips don't end identically, because two of these performances, B and D, take the first-movement repeat, and so use Brahms's "first ending," which brings the first statement of the exposition to a different close, preparing to take us back to the opening [actually bar 2], whereas A and C go straight into the "second ending," which prepares us to proceed into the development section.)

A couple of notes about the juxtaposition of "Borodin Trio" and "Borodin Quartet" here. The "Borodin Quartet" of which three members collaborate with pianist Sviatoslav Richter in the Brahms quartet isn't the stupendous original Borodin Quartet, with Rostislav Dubinsky (1923-1997) as first violinist. No, this is the next iteration, after Dubinsky and his wife, pianist Luba Edlina, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976. (Second violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov had retired, apparently for health reasons, in 1974.) However, two of the three string players we hear, violist Dmitri Shebalin and cellist Valentin Berlinsky, are indeed holdovers from those glory years. Richter had had an excellent working relationship with the original Borodin Quartet, and maintained it with the revamped version, with the new violinists.

Not long after Dubinsky and Edlina (a wonderful pianist who had played and recorded frequently with the Borodin Quartet) emigrated, they formed a piano trio with a Montreal-based fellow émigré, Yuli Turovsky, and eventually recorded a goodly portion of the piano-trio literature for Chandos. Long-time Sunday Classics readers know that I consider both the original Borodin Quartet and the Borodin Trio among the greatest chamber ensembles to have made records.

"CONTRAST" IS GOING TO BE OUR WATCHWORD TODAY.NO COMPOSER DID IT BETTER -- OR MORE COMPULSIVELY

Take anger, for example. It is famously the, uh, well, one of the stages of grieving, and that's where the third of the Wayfarer Songs begins -- in spluttering rage. But soon enough it dissolves into something else, though we haven't heard the last of the anger.

This is an indelible image for our wayfarer. We already devoted a fair amount of attention to "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" in Friday's preview, and now we're going to hear the two most beautiful performances of it I've heard, starting with the extraordinary one by Maureen Forrester which we heard then.

As I mentioned, there's a great deal I want to ponder in this song. For today, however, let me just throw out a few thoughts. First, note the total absence of any nonvocal introduction. The earlier Wayfarer Songs keep the introducing to a minimum; here Mahler does away with it altogether.

Then there's the intriguing structure, or layout, of the song. There's a fairly "normal" first stanza and then, at "O Augen blau," what sounds like a fairly standard second stanza in the form of a varied version of the first, but it doesn't materialize. Then, at "Ich bin ausgeganen," we have what clearly sounds like a contrasting "B" section, but it doesn't quite materialize either, soon giving way to a really contrasting section -- the haunting "Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum."

And in case you thought we were heading for the commonly employed repeat of the "A" section, which you'll recall Mahler in fact did when he incorporated this section of the song into the First Symphony, there's nothing. We have a song that seems to start in mid-thought and to end in, well, no thought.

NOW AS TO THOSE TWO SCHUBERTSONG DIGRESSIONS I PROMISED

As it happens, they both deal with those "contrasting" sections of "Die zwei blauen Augen," which I've labeled "B" and "C."

First, and this may just be stream of consciousness on my part, there's the revelation in the "B" section that the wayfarer isn't just grieving his lost (or rejected) love. Just like the journeyer in Schubert's immortal Winterreise (Winter Journey) song cycle, he has a vivid memory of slinking out of town in the dead of night, unnoticed and probably unremembered by anyone there. No one said farewell ("Ade") to him, he recalls.

When I hear that word of parting "Ade," I think immediately of a great Schubert song that seems to contain hardly any other words. It's the Rellstab setting "Abschied" ("Farewell") from the bunch of songs from Schubert's last year that were posthumously gathered into the collection Schwanengesang (Swan Song).

I can't say I hear any specifically musical reminiscence, but I can't believe that Mahler could write a song -- and remember, he created the words as well as the music for the Wayfarer Songs -- about a rejected lover coming to a linden tree without thinking of one of the most memorable songs from Winterreise.

Let's just consider two points in the fourth stanza, rendered by our translator as:

And its branches rustledAs if calling to me:"Come here, to me, friend,Here you will find you peace!"

First, the word that our translator quite reasonably renders as "peace" is the very word, "Ruhe," that I've translated in our song as "rest." In the German-speaking countries "Der Lindenbaum" has achieved quasi-folksong status, but often without the realization that the subject is the journeyer's serious contemplation of opting for eternal rest.

And then, in the seductive call to suicide which the journeyer imagines the linden tree's rustling branchese might be saying to him, "Come here, to me, friend" -- the actual word he uses is "Geselle." As in Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO BE SAID (AND HEARD),BUT THAT WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER TIME

THE PERFORMANCE WE'RE ABOUT TO HEAR IS SOSPECIAL, IT THWARTED MY ORIGINAL INTENTION

If I were to make a short list of the most beautiful pieces of musical performance I've heard, no matter how short the list got, I think I'd have a tough time jettisoning this one. My original plan was to make an audio clip of just the "Auf der Strasse" section, as I did before the click-through with the Fischer-Dieskau recordings. The thing was, when it came to wielding the digital ax, I found myself so overwhelmed that I just couldn't do it. The best I could do was to provide a time cue for the "Auf der Strasse" section. )

You'll note, by the way, that this section marks another of the "minor to major" transformations we listened to in December (first preview, then main post).

When we get to the third movement of the First Symphony, you'll notice that this section isn't all the Mahler borrowed for the symphonic movement. Notably that relentlessly rocking timpani-tap underpinning stepped out into the foreground.

Here, by the way is the whole of the two 1968 Fischer-Dieskau performances, the piano-accompanied one with Leonard Bernstein and the orchestral version with Rafael Kubelik. I've also thrown in the earlier orchestral recording with Wilhelm Furtwängler. In "Die zwei blauen Augen" Fischer-Dieskau is still fussing more than I would like, but I think we nevertheless get a good glimpse -- in the performance with Kubelik in particular -- of his greatness as an artist.

NOW LET'S HEAR THE SYMPHONIC MOVEMENTINTO WHICH MAHLER INCORPORATED THE SONG

You'll notice that less than four years separate the Boston Symphony performance we're about to hear of the third movement of the Mahler First Symphony (from which we've actually already heard a snatch before the click-through) from the above recording of "Die zwei blauen Augen," but they were pretty significant years for the orchestra, with Erich Leinsdorf succeeding Charles Munch as music director with the 1961-62 season.

There's no question that it was a big, almost traumatic change for the orchestra and its fans. For all that, and for all that Munch wasn't exactly a "Mahler conductor," I think you can hear -- even in digitized and MP3-ed form -- the continuity in the basic sound quality of what I always thought of as, along with Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, the most beautiful orchestras I knew.

Then we'll also hear the complete Kubelik-Bavarian Radio Symphony performance.

In the manger at this time Jesus had just been born,but no wonder had yet made him known.And already the powerful were trembling;already the weak were hoping.Everyone was waiting.

Now learn, Christians, what a monstrous crimewas suggested to the King of the Jews by terror.And the celestial warning that in their humble stablewas sent to the parents of Jesus by the Lord.

Scene 1: Nocturnal March; Scene, Centurion and Polydorus

A simultaneously eerie and goofy Nocturnal March sets the stage for a dialogue in which a Roman centurion and a soldier who stands watch on King Herod's palace discuss the king's increasingly erratic behavior.

A street in Jerusalem. A guardhouse; Roman soldiers on night patrol.

-- Nocturnal March

-- Scene, Centurion and Polydorus

CENTURION: Who goes there?POLYDORUS: Rome.CENTURION: Advance!POLYDORUS: Halt!CENTURION: Polydorus! Corporal, I thought you were on Tiber’s banks by now.POLYDORUS: So I should be if Gallus, our precious Praetor,had only let me.But for no good reasonhe’s shut me upin this dreary city, watching its anticsand keeping guard over a petty Jewish king’ssleepless nights.CENTURION: What’s Herod doing?POLYDORUS: He broods, quakes with fear,sees traitors on every side, and daily summonshis Council; and from dusk to dawnhas to be looked after: he’s getting on our nerves.CENTURION: Absurd despot! But off on your rounds now.POLYDORUS: Yes, I must. Good night! Jove’s curse on him![The patrol resumes its march and moves off into the distance.]

Scene 2, Herod's Aria

The scene switches to Herod's palace, where the king is haunted by persistent dreams of an imminent threat to his rule. He then claims -- to himself, mind you, since there's no one else around -- that this business of being a king is a misery, a horrible burden, when what he would really like to be doing is gamboling with goatherds out in the fields. It's as eloquent and heart-rending an outpouring as you can hear anywhere, and of course it's all total bullshit. The moment his soothsayers confirm the possibility of a threat to his reign, he instantly orders the massacre of the innocents, without hesitation or compunction.

KING HEROD: That dream again! Again the childwho is to cast me down.And not to know what to believeof this omen which threatensmy glory and my existence!

O the wretchedness of kings!To reign, yet not to live!To mete out laws to all,yet long to followthe goatherd into the heart of the woods!Fathomless nightholding the worlddeep sunk in sleep,to my tormented breastgrant peace for one hour,and let thy shadows touchmy gloom-pressed brow.

POLYDORUS: My lord!HEROD [drawing his sword]: Cowards, tremble! I still know how to handle a sword . . .POLYDORUS: Stop!HEROD [recognizing him]: An, it's you, Polydorus.What do you come to announce to me?POLYDORUS: My lord, the Jewish soothsayers have just assembled on your orders.HEROD: Finally!POLYDORUS: They're out there.HEROD: Let them appear!

Scene 4, The Soothsayers and Herod

SOOTHSAYERS: The sages of Judea, o king, recognize youas a wise and generous prince!HEROD: Let them be good enough to enlighten me. Is there some remedyfor the devouring worry that for a long time has obsessed me?SOOTHSAYERS: What is it?HEROD: The same dream torments me.Always a serious and slow voicerepeats these words to me: "Your happy time is fleeing!A child has just been bornwho will cause the disappearanceof your throne and your power."Can I learn from youif this terror that overwhelms meis well-founded, and how this formidable dangercan be averted?SOOTHSAYERS: The spirits will knowand, consulted by us, they will reply soon.HEROD:[THE SOOTHSAYERS perform some cabalistic contortions and proceed to the conjuring.]SOOTHSAYERS: The voice spoke true, my lord. A child has just been bornwho will cause the disappearanceof your throne and your power.But no one can knoweither his name or his race.HEROD: What must I do?SOOTHSAYERS: You will fall unless one satisfiesthe dark spirits, and if -- to counteract fate --you don't order the death of newborn children.HEROD [seems hesitant]: Well then . . .[He stands up and advances.]Well then! Let them perish by the sword!I can't hesitate! In Jerusalem,in Nazareth, in Bethlehem,let my blows fall heavily on all newborns!Despite the cries, despite the tearsof so many distressed mothers,rivers of blood are going to be spilled.I will be deaf to these sufferings.Neither beauty nor grace nor agewill cause my courage to weaken:There must be an end to my terrors!SOOTHSAYERS: Yes, yes, let them perish by the sword!Don't hesitate, don't hesitate! In Jerusalem,in Nazareth, in Bethlehem,let your blows fall heavily on all newborns!HEROD: No, no, no, no, in In Jerusalem,in Nazareth, in Bethlehem,let my blows fall heavily on all newborns!SOOTHSAYERS and HEROD: Yes! Despite the cries, despite the tearsof so many distressed mothers,rivers of blood are going to be spilled.Remain, I say, deaf to these sufferings.HEROD: Neither beauty nor grace nor agewill cause my courage to weaken:There must be an end to my terrors! &c.SOOTHSAYERS: Let nothing shake your courageQAnd you, spirits, to stir up his rage,redouble his terrors,remain deaf to these sufferings! &c.

THE SCENE CHANGES TO THAT STABLE IN BETHLEHEM

Scene 5, The Stable in Bethlehem

In the final scenes of Part II we meet the Holy Family holed up in their stable. The adoring parents are tending to their precious new son when angels deliver the celestial warning the Narrator also told us of, and Mary and Joseph accept that their only hope of saving little Jésus is to flee into the desert wilderness in the direction of Egypt.

MARY: O my dear son, give this fresh grassto these lambs that come bleating to thee;they are so gentle, let them take it. Don’t let them go hungry, my child.MARY, JOSEPH: Spread these flowers, too, about their straw. They are pleased with thy gifts, dear child; see how blithe they are, how they gambol, and how their mother turns towards thee her grateful gaze.MARY:Blessed be thou, my dear sweet child!JOSEPH: Blessed be thou, holy child!

Scene 6, The Angels' Warning

CHOIR OF UNSEEN ANGELS: Joseph! Mary! Hearken to us!MARY, JOSEPH: Spirits of life, can it be you?ANGELS: Thou must save thy sonwhom great danger threatens, Mary.MARY: O heavens! My son!ANGELS: Yes, you must goand leave no trace behind you;this very night you shall flee through the deserttowards Egypt.MARY, JOSEPH: Obedient to your word, pure spirits of light,we shall flee with Jesus to the desert.But grant us, we humbly pray,wisdom and strength, so we shall save him.ANGELS: The power of heavenwill keep from your pathall fatal encounters.MARY, JOSEPH: Let us hasten to get ready.ANGELS: Hosanna! Hosanna!

Saturday, April 06, 2002

NARRATOR: For three days, despite the hot winds,they journeyed through the shifting sands.The holy family’s poor servant,the ass, had already fallen in the desert dust;and long before they saw a city’s walls, his masterwould have died from exhaustion and thirst,but for God’s help.Only holy Marywalked on serene and untroubled; and her sweetchild’s fair locks and blessed head, resting againsther breast, seemed to give her strength.But soon her feet stumbled ...How many times the couple stopped ...At length they cameto Saïs, gaspingand near to death.It was a city that had long been partof the Roman Empire,full of cruel folk, with haughty airs.Hear now of the grievous agony endured so longby the pilgrims in their search for food and shelter.

We've jumped to the last part of Berlioz's "sacred trilogy," for a glimpse of the dire straits our desert wanderers find themselves in as they stagger into the Egyptian city of Saïs, as laid out once again by our Narrator. The three sections of narration (plus the introduction to the Finale) don't account for that much of the running time of L'Enfance, but for me they're not just the narrative but the emotional core of the piece. We've heard them all before, though I've done some cleaning up of the recordings I dubbed from LP, which in this installment means the '50s mono versions with those fine Gallic tenors Jean Giraudeau (1916-1995) and Quebec-born Léopold Simoneau (1916-2006), which I haven't seen on CD. Anyway, let's quickly review the three narrations.

From the performance standpoint, the terrible trap of the narrations is to fall into a sentimentalizing sing-songy delivery. This is musically ultra-precise story-telling. (Note how different the three narrations are.) Which is why so far I've been highlighting the expert French character tenor Michel Sénéchal (born 1927), who has the extra advantage of working with a conductor who shows little inclination to drawn-out "expressiveness." (By comparison, the wonderful light lyric tenor Cesare Valletti, whom we mini-profiled back in June 2010, faces a much stiffer challenge in Charles Munch's lusher, more expansive environment.) On Sunday we're going to hear the whole of Part I from perhaps the least sentimentalized and most fully realized L'Enfance on records, the '60s version conducted by Jean Martinon (once available here on Nonesuch LPs), where we'll hear the opening narration sung just about ideally by the fine legit lyric tenor Alain Vanzo (1928-2002).

Opening Narration

NARRATOR: In the manger at this time Jesus had just been born,but no wonder had yet made him known.And already the powerful were trembling;already the weak were hoping.Everyone was waiting.

Now learn, Christians, what a monstrous crimewas suggested to the King of the Jews by terror.And the celestial warning that in their humble stablewas sent to the parents of Jesus by the Lord.

The narration in tiny Part II comes not at the beginning but at the end, after the holy family has taken flight, following a tearful farewell from the shepherds among whom they have been living. In this more reflective bit of story-telling the more "emotional" L'Enfance performances come on strong.

NARRATOR: The pilgrims having cometo a place of fair aspectwith bushy treesand fresh water in abundance,St Joseph said: "Stop,near this clear spring!After such long toillet us rest here."The child Jesus was asleep. Then Holy Mary,halting the ass, answered:"Look at this fair carpet of soft grass and flowersthat the Lord spread in the desert for my son."Then, having sat down in the shadeof three green-leaved palm trees,while the ass browsedand the child slept,the holy travellers slumbered for a while,lulled by sweet dreams,and the angels of heaven, kneeling about them,worshipped the divine child.CHORUS: Alleluia! Alleluia!

As the narrator tells us here at the start of Part III, the holy family, after wandering through the Sinai desert, arrives in the Egyptian city of Saïs on the brink of death from thirst, hunger, and exposure.

NARRATOR: For three days, despite the hot winds,they journeyed through the shifting sands.The holy family’s poor servant,the ass, had already fallen in the desert dust;and long before they saw a city’s walls, his masterwould have died from exhaustion and thirst,but for God’s help.Only holy Marywalked on serene and untroubled; and her sweetchild’s fair locks and blessed head, resting againsther breast, seemed to give her strength.But soon her feet stumbled ...How many times the couple stopped ...At length they cameto Saïs, gaspingand near to death.It was a city that had long been partof the Roman Empire,full of cruel folk, with haughty airs.Hear now of the grievous agony endured so longby the pilgrims in their search for food and shelter.

. . . following the miraculous rescue of the desperate family by a compassionate Ishmaelite father. I discovered that I had already made audio files for this Finale, but I don't think we've ever actually heard them. So I think we'll save them for Sunday's main post.

ALSO IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

Although we've heard substantial chunks of the largest part of L'Enfance, Part I, Sunday we're going to have a Sunday Classics first: the whole of Part I, in two lovely performances from the '60s -- as noted above the sadly disappeared recording conducted by Sunday Classics standby Jean Martinon, and André Cluytens's second recording, for EMI, featuring Nicolai Gedda as the Narrator. Along the way we'll hear an interesting "double" from bass-baritone Roger Soyer, still early in his career, singing both King Herod (with Martinon) and Saint Joseph (with Cluytens).

As I noted Friday night, althought the texts of the Wayfarer Songs were written by Mahler himself, they're very much in the spirit of the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), which was so important to Mahler at this stage of his creative love. Ordinary folks suffering thwarted love and the immersion in nature are fundamental Wunderhorn motifs. At the same time, it's not just the theme of a jilted lover that calls to mind Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey); in the last song, as we'll hear eventually, there's even a crucial episode that involves the singer stopping by a roadside linden tree.

One curious feature of the Wayfarer Songs is the drastic reduction -- and in the case of the third song outright elimination -- of an instrumental introduction.

So let's listen to the opening song. In today's selections the ladies are overwhelming the gents, even though the songs -- like those of Schubert's Winterreise -- seem clearly written for a man. In the case of Mahler's cycle, and of his Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) as well, the songs generally wind up a more comfortable fit for a low-voice female than for her male counterpart, both interpretively and vocally. (From the vocal standpoint, when the vocal line rises up, it pushes the baritone right into the difficult area of the vocal "break" between chest and head registers.)

We've got an interesting male performance of each song, and on the female side we'll hear both songs sung by the full-voice mezzo Yvonne Minton (with Sir Georg's vivid accompaniments) and a full-fledge contralto, one of our go-to Mahlerites, Maureen Forrester. (The weight of Forrester's contralto will really make its mark in the later songs.)

Now let's hear "Ging heut' Morgen" again, in context, and note the way the almost thrown-away ending seems to nullify all the merry-making that precedes it. If you're thinking this may have consequences in the later songs, you're right.

LET'S REMEMBER THAT THE WAYFARER SONGS WEREFIRST WRITTEN WITH JUST PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT

Friday night we heard two recordings of the piano version of "Wenn mein Schatz" by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, widely admired -- though not so much by me -- for his Mahler, both with famous pianist-conductors, first with Leonard Bernstein at the piano, then with Daniel Barenboim. At the time I wrote that these were the only piano versions I could think of in my collection. Naturally it didn't take much additional thinking to enable me to think of two more, from collections where they're shoehorned in with selections of Mahler's "early" songs. I suppose it's plausible enough to think of the Wayfarer Songs as the culmination of Mahler's early songs, and their inclusion certainly increases the repertory appeal of the discs in question.

Since both of the singers in question made fairly famous recordings of the orchestral versions, I though we'd pair them. Note that in Janet Baker's case -- yes, now we're going to hear both songs from that wonderful recording of the cycled with Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra -- the piano recording was made a lot of years after the orchestral one, and the voice sounds it; note that Dame Janet takes very much the same broad tempos in these songs that she did with Sir John, but it doesn't work nearly as well. In Hampson's case, the Mahler songs he recorded with Leonard Bernstein are the best things I've heard him do.

MAYBE THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO TAKE ALISTEN-OVER-TIME TO FISCHER-DIESKAU'S MAHLER

For many people. of course, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the Mahler singer. I certainly don't dismiss him in this repertory, and indeed we've heard some pretty nice performances (I know I should offer links, but I'm just not up to digging them out; does anyone care?). But in general his approach -- with all that teasing overemphasis, of the "Look, Ma, I'm interpreting" school, has the effect of taking me, at least, away from the basic sense of the songs. I don't get "interpretive insight"; I get mostly cheesy vocal effects.

As I noted, we heard his piano-accompanied recordings of "Ging heut' Morgen" Friday preview. Here are his three orchestral recordings (at least the three I'm familiar with0, which cover a whopping 37-year span, beginning with the one made with leftover time from the Furtwänlger-EMI Tristan und Isolde, in which Fischer-Dieskau sang Kurwenal. As far as I know, this is still Furtwängler's only recorded Mahler.